He knows not what love is who doesn't love you, oh, celestial beauty, bridegroom fair; your head is of pure gold, your flowing hair like crowns that palm fronds cover totally; your mouth is like a lily, from which spills sweet liquor at dawn; ivory your neck; your hand the wheel, and on its palm the seal, which souls call hyacinths for secrecy.

My God, what thought I when, leaving behind such beauty, and just mortal grace could see, I lost what might have been my greatest joy?

But if the time I've lost disturbs me now,I shall make haste, so that one hour of love the years I've spent pretending will destroy.

What have I that my friendship you should seek?What wealth from it, my Jesus, could you gainso that at my front door, bedecked with dew,you spend dark winter nights in snow and sleet?How hard was I within my deepest coreto never let you in! How strangely madif of my callousness the frigid icedried up the bleeding wounds of your pure feet!

How many times the angel said to me,"Soul, come now to the window and look out:you'll see with how much love he knocks again!"

And oh, how many times, beauty divine,"Tomorrow he may enter," I'd respond,only tomorrow to respond the same!

When I pause to contemplate my circumstance,and look back on the road I have traversed,I am astonished that so lost a man the error of his ways could recognize. When I look back upon the years I've spent forgetful then of all reason divine, I see that it has been by heaven's grace that into evil's pit I did not slide.

I entered through so strange a labyrinth,trusting that the weak thread of my life would let me see, though late, my own confusion;

but by Your light my darkness overcome, the monster slain of my blind self-deceit, lost reason comes home for its apt conclusion.

Shepherd! who with thine amorous, sylvan song Hast broken the slumber that encompassed me, Who mad'st Thy crook from the accursed tree On which Thy powerful arms were stretched so long! Lead me to mercy's ever-flowing fountains; For Thou my shepherd, guard, and guide shalt be; I will obey Thy voice, and wait to see Thy feet all beautiful upon the mountains.

Hear, Shepherd Thou who for Thy flock art dying, Oh, wash away these scarlet sins, for Thou Rejoicest at the contrite sinner's vow. Oh, wait! to Thee my weary soul is crying, Wait for me: Yet why ask it, when I see, With feet nailed to the cross, Thou'rt waiting still for me!

A daring, living atom suckèd Fair Leonór’s white breasts, A garnet amidst pearls, a mite in a rose, A brief mole with an invisible tooth. She, two points of shining ivory, with sudden disquiet, whining, bathed, and with her twisting its boisterous life, in a single torment, it feels a double revenge. When the flea expired, it quoth: ‘Alas me, wretch, for such a petty wrong, so sharp the pain!’ ‘Oh, flea!’ quoth I, ‘happy thou wert, ‘Hold thy ghost, and tell Leonór to let me suck where thou wert and I’ll exchange my life for thy death.’

My darling Vi requests a sonnet now,and I have never been so rushed before.A sonnet's lines must number ten plus four,so just in jest I have some three lines - now.(I knew 1 wouldn't find a rhyme for ''now")but here I 'm halfway thru the second fourand when I find I'm at the sextet's doorthere's nothing of the octave left by now.And now I come to tercet number one,and I'm prepared to start the scheme anew,by ending tercet one, although in fun.And now I come to tercet number twoand I should say that thirteen lines are done:Now count them, there are fourteen, and I'm thru.

Night, you fabricator of deceptions, insane, fantastic, and chimerical, who show those who derive delight from you the mountains flattened and the seas gone dry; inhabitor of hollow, empty brains, mechanic, alchemist, philosopher, a vile concealer, lynx that cannot see, you are of your own echoes terrified:

darkness, fear, and evil are your works, cautious, poetess, infirm and cold, with ruffian's hands and feet of fugitive.

Whether I sleep or wake, half my life's yours: if I'm awake, I pay you the next day, and if I sleep, I sense not what I live.

Free my sweet lamb, shepherd from afar,for you've another that is more like you;let go the creature that my soul adores, whose loss you celebrate and I must rue.Put back on her the bell of well-wrought tin, and don't deceive her with your chains of gold; accept for all your troubles this white bull which when spring comes will be just one year old.

If you require description, she's got fleece that's brown and curly, and her little eyeslook like she just woke up, as there she stands.

If you think, Alsino, she's not mine, just let her go and see her find my hut: her owner's still got salt upon his hands.

The glorious palm tree drops its leafy frondsand without love wears sterile mourning clothes; Daphne in barren laurel tree complains, Narcissus in white petals sheds his soul. The earth without rain finds itself becalmed, a dried-up field rank weeds can only grow; because she never paid tribute to love, Anaxarete's soul cries within its stone.

The love of sand and water gold engenders; since oysters are enamored of the dew, they can with oriental pearls be filled.

So do not scorn my love, Lucinda fair, for when the sun goes down, the lilies soonwill lose their luster and our life its thrill.

Like a deluded child who, happily a brightly colored bird has deftly tied, and leaves it on the string, in confidence,in the calm breeze its wings to exercise;and when he's most attentive to his game,as the string breaks, his hopes go all awry;he follows it, bathed in his flowing tears,with his sad thoughts and disillusioned eyes,

with you I've been, oh Love; my memoryI let fill up with futile sentiments,that hanging by a hair in limbo float.

The wind swept off the bird and all my joy,and left me with the string between my hands,which now I'm left to use on my own throat.

Troy is burning, black smoke rises upto the opposing sky, and all the while,with joy, Juno observes the fire and tears:a woman's vengeance, what harsh penalty!The masses, even in their shrines exposed,all flee, enveloped by a yellow fright;congealed blood down the murky Xanthus runs,and to earth fall high walls of masonry.

The fire from without fuels flames within,lofty devices falling to the ground,which now are seen in ruins, shattered, disarmed.

And the harsh cause of so much injury,while conquered Paris dies engulfed in flames,of the Greek victor sleeps within the arms.

From bed down to the floor all bloody hangs the right shoulder of the merciless lord,who storming futilely Bethulia's wall, hurled bolts against himself towards heaven's hold. In agony entangled, the red veil of the pavilion, on the lefthand side, reveals the cruel, inhuman spectacle of his hideous trunk, now icy cold.

Spilled Bacchus stains his sturdy coat of mail, the glasses and the table overturned; the guards sleep, who stand him in such poor stead;

and there, atop the jagged city wall of Israel's tribe, the Hebrew woman chaste appears resplendent, brandishing his head.

People wait to hear the battle's drumwhen there's a dagger polished up and cleaned,and when there's a clean crossbow or its dartit shows that there's a hunter at his chore:when naked from its now deserted sheaththe knight's sword comes, then honor spurs him on;when one cleans gun or rifle with great care,it shows that there will be a bloody war;

and when from the bright, burnished ivory bowof her teeth all the plunder fair Lucille,with the swift arrow of her tongue, has prised,

it shows something is meant to kill and vex;or maybe it's a rainbow that's emerged,to calm the showers falling from my eyes.

If the founding father of us all,his nature common to all humankind,himself showed scorn for what was sovereign law,obeying cravings of a woman's mind;if a King David and a Nazarene,to Bathsheba and cruel Delilah too,their strength and victory yield up with ease,which neither beast nor Philistine could do,

to what extent did my eyes come to trust,my intellect presume to know so muchthat your grace did not mock or compromise?

For with strength, truth, and virtue surely strayedAdam the first of men, David the saint,Samson the strong and Solomon the wise.

Midas begs of Bacchus that whateverhe might touch become gold (mad desire!);to gold is changed all that he sees and touches,the well-wrought palace and the wood's green fold.In whatever place his body lingers,gold now assaults him, on hard stone he sleeps;gold he eats, gold drinks: his very mouthwants also that it all be turned to gold.

Death, at last, his mighty auricide,ambition conquered, and all wrapped in gold,up to his final breath, he slowly dried.

Thus I, so sad, will surely end my life,since so much love I sought that, to love turnedmy sleep and taste, all glutted now I die.

The icy stream is not on mountain high more scintillating or more crystalline, nor carvèd ebony as dark or fine, nor flaxen flowers as blue in deep July, nor does the eastern gold more brightly shine, nor breathes the scent of precious amber more sensual, more delicate or pure, nor can the conch a richer red define,

than forehead, eyebrows, eyes and hair and breath and mouth of my seraphic lovely one, an angel's face revealed in human guise;

these things without her would seem dull as death, since she embodies them: crystal; ebon'; flax and gold and amber; scarlet dyes.